If the young people of today are to thrive beyond the walls of the classroom they will need to be able to cope with a world characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. The children of todays Kindergarten will enter the workplace in the fourth-decade of the 21st Century. We debate the merits of teaching 21st Century Skills and what they might be while teaching children who have lived their entire lives in that very century. The challenge is how will schools and individual teachers respond to this drive for urgent change.

A recent post by George Couros (author of The innovators Mindset) posed an interesting question about the role that culture plays in shaping the trajectory of an organisation. The traditional wisdom is that culture trumps all but George points to the role that individuals play in shaping and changing culture itself. Is culture perhaps less resilient than we are led to imagine and is it just a consequence of the individuals with the greatest influence? Or, is something else at play here?

You do not need to look very hard to find a report claiming that schools and education needs to change. But real change needs more than teacher blaming and increased accountability. What will drive real change is . . .

I am currently reading "Thank you for being late: An optimist's guide to thriving in the age of accelerations" and have found in this the answer to these questions. In essence we are confronting two types of change, one that we have always faced and one that is unique to our current times.

Understanding responses to change is critical and with the predicted future of education increasingly being linked to innovative practices which prepare students for an unknown future change is a central theme

The potential for reliably predicting the outcome of any change effort is surely difficult if not even impossible once the number of influences becomes large. Acknowledging the complexity that exists and seeing the potential for growth, creativity and innovation that can exist within an organisation at 'the edge of chaos' are useful strategies as schools face a period of unprecedented change.

Embedded in the very weave of the organisation, culture is the most difficult aspect of an organisation to change and the hardest form of change to sustain 'That's because transforming a culture requires influencing people's deepest beliefs and most habitual behaviours' (Rogers, Meehan & Tanne 2006 p5). Rogers et al indicate that as little as 10% of all organisations that set out to develop a high performing culture achieve their goal.

Change is something that we fear or embrace. It is widely considered as the one constant in our lives. For education at present we face a deluge of reports that the pace of change shall only accelerate and its scale become more absolute. No wonder then that many teachers feel now is a good time for a move out of the profession. For others the changing face of education is seen as bringing exciting new possibilities wrapped in engaging challenges. Regardless of how reliable predictions for change may prove to be it is worth considering how individuals and groups respond to it.

We have linked our destinies, not only among ourselves across the globe, but with our technology. If the theme of the Enlightenment was independence, our own theme is interdependence. We are now all connected, humans and machines. Welcome to the dawn of the Entanglement.

Somehow I haven't been aware of the Edge before. Seems sort of like a space for a text version of TED Talks.

From Daniel Hillis's piece answering the question of 2011: "How has the Internet changed the way you think?"

"We have linked our destinies, not only among ourselves across the globe, but with our technology. If the theme of the Enlightenment was independence, our own theme is interdependence. We are now all connected, humans and machines. Welcome to the dawn of the Entanglement."

Part of the challenge in educational reform is that not everyone defines learning or education the same way. Sure, we all refer to things such as literacy, college and career ready, 21st century skills, etc. However, what is the core purpose of one's education? Beyond specifics related to employment skills, literacy skills and standards mastery, I offer up this idea: Education is meant to transform one's life. In other words, education has to dramatically, or even radically, transform the person into a new, improved person that is more emotionally, socially, and intellectually ready for any challenge the world has to offer."

Linking strategic and systemic intervention to genuine self-discovery and self-development by leaders is a far better path to embracing the vision of the organization and to realizing its business goals.